Ergon Energy Retail is
the fourth largest retailer
in Australia.
There will be more transition
in the next five years
than we've seen
in the previous 100 years,
as we transition
to renewable energies future.
We were only the second retailer
in Australia
to migrate to this platform,
and the only government
utility in the world to do so.
This transformation
was a real achievement,
so Ergon
set out
with a really bold ambition
in a tough market context.
So our transformation
was ambitious from the start.
A whole new range of retail capability
CRM, Billing Engine,
Meter Data Management,
Settlement Solution,
Data Lake Reporting,
New customer portal.
In addition to that, we were
migrating more
than a million customers.
We partnered with both BCG and Kraken
to modernize our technology platform.
BCG’s role was to be
a strategic execution partner
for Ergon’s transformation.
And our role was really
end-to-end
from build to operate
and then transfer,
driving that execution certainty
and making sure
that we were burning down
those risks as they emerged
and also driving the value
that was in the business case.
Choosing Kraken was a bold
move for Ergon Retail.
Organizations that will be successful,
are bold in their thinking
and have the courage to be different.
We had to adopt and not adapt.
So this isn't going through
building something bespoke
for our organization.
We were changing
our customer-facing staff,
their ways of working
and how we organized,
to manage our customers.
We achieved all that
within 300 business days.
We maintained a customer satisfaction
rate of above 80%.
The beauty of the transformation
being so quick though,
was that we were able to contain that
level of impact
to a short few months,
as opposed
to dragging it out for years,
which is typical
with other transformations.
Moving to the new model
has already seen a massive improvement
in our customer happiness.
They love being able
to talk to one person
and be able
to resolve all of their inquiries
without being handed off.
What makes this truly impressive,
I think, is that it wasn't
just a technology re-platform,
it was a genuine
business transformation.
And so that involves things
like changing the way
that business and IT work together,
changing the way
the agents engage with their customers,
and really changing that culture
from the bottom up.
Culture is critical
because beyond the transformation,
you need your people
to carry this model forward
into the day-to-day.
So our change effort and communications
had to be very deliberate.
There was regular communication
to people
about changing people's roles.
We're also changing the way
in which they communicate
and interact with each other.
Empowerment was one of the key factors
in our success for this transformation.
We were absolutely focused
on making sure that decisions
were made in the line,
so those that were responsible for
the outcome would also be those
that were making the decisions.
Experience really matters
because large-scale projects
often have a tendency to go wrong
if they're not managed properly.
BCG’s research
with over 800 programs
suggests that about 70%
of these programs tend to fail,
We deliberately set out to set up teams
of internal staff
who had deep knowledge
base in the business
and partnered them
with experienced partners like BCG
to ensure that we could get
the best outcomes.
Discipline in any enterprise
transformation is important
because our chosen method of delivery
was a progressive
or incremental go live.
We needed to be absolutely certain
that all
the streams of the project
were aligned and working in unison.
BCG were pivotal in our transformation.
Their experience
and strategic insights
helped navigate
the complexities of the project.
But what I loved most about them
was they were with us
every step of the way
delivering successful
outcomes together.